(This is another example of attempted historical erasure when two historical moments and realities met)
As the anniversary of 9/11 was approaching, and while other teachers were putting up displays to commemorate it, I, as the only teacher held to Paragraph J that was supposed to apply to all teachers’ being required to get anything they wanted to post in their classroom approved by the principal while I was actually the only one held to it, wrote to the principal that I planned to put up a display. He informed me that he would stop by and review it. He came to my room more than once the next day, but, either I was not there as was the case the first time, or he saw there was nothing to inspect the second as I had not put the display together yet. He paid another visit the following day letting me know he would come back again as soon as I put the display together and had it up.
I was the only teacher who faced such an inspection.
Rather than review the display before I hung it, the principal said more than once that he would view it after I had. This seemed backward, so, I assumed demanding removal was more dramatic than a simple refusal issued quietly in a small room like his office or on a piece of paper that no one but I would see, and drama is what he wanted.
During one of my classes, as the kids read silently, I hung a list of Gay victims and heroes of 9/11 that I had found on the internet, along with the Daily Oklahoman’s commemorative insert which exclusively covered the heterosexual victims and heroes. As I was heading to lunch, I passed the principal and informed him that the display was up for his inspection.
When I returned from lunch, I found this note attached to the display:”Mr. Quigley, either remove the statements about these victims, or place heterosexual information about victims alongside.”
When I inspected some of the other teacher displays throughout the building, I found that most had pictures of and stories about the victims, the heroes, and their Heterosexual spouses. Some had heart-warming stories about post 9/11 life and stories of the spouses’ attempts to deal with the year that had passed since the event. They were all straight couples with no references to the many that were Gay. Yet, none were given the requirement of balance as I had been, a requirement I had already covered with the local daily newspaper’s insert.
Later in the day the principal traced me down to another teacher’s classroom where I was visiting, and handed me the following memo:
”I came by your room at 11:25 AM to see your display as you had requested. You had already posted this in violation of school policy J, which indicates prior-approval shall be received before posting informational signs or posters. You are directed to remove it by 1:50 PM today, September 10. I will review it after the faculty meeting this afternoon. Thank you for your compliance.”
He, obviously, wanted some drama.
He then came to my classroom just after lunch while I had students, and asked me in front of them if I was going to remove the display. I told him I would comply with his directive, but he was a little early.
It was to be and was indeed down by 1:50 PM as required.
Another teacher came to me at the end of the day concerned because she had seen the Principal open my door with his key while I was out of my room for lunch, and then through the window of the door saw him going through my desk. She found this disturbing.
Upon inspection, I noticed nothing was missing from my desk, but when I checked around my room I did notice that the framed quote from the in-service back in 1998 during which the troublesome chair of the Diversity Committee had brought up the inclusion of Gay students in sexual harassment policies by saying at each school,
“Recently there have been same-sex sexual harassment complaints. And, more and more we have to realize that among our children there are some of them who have not determined, fully, their sexuality, and there are some of our children that may be Gay. Regardless of what you think, let me tell you one thing that is an imperative. Those children must be protected. If we don’t pay attention and protect those children we are in violation of their rights under Title IX, and we could be liable,”
which I kept in my room for the Gay students and their peers to see, and as a small trophy of having gotten at least one concession from the District, was missing from where it should have been hanging. I also noticed that there was something different about my homemade 9/11 poster when I looked more closely at it.
The Principal would eventually voice his objection to the quote‘s being hung in my classroom because, as he had not been at that particular in-service on the day it was given, he had not heard it stated at his own school. To be able to rehang the quote, I was told I would have to write a letter to the person who had made the statement to verify that he had made it. This was made impossible by the fact that this man was in the process of leaving the District and was more involved in packing up than in answering trivial correspondence. I, instead, eventually had to go to my old middle school and get a copy of the faculty sign in sheet to the relevant in-service to show the Principal the number of witnesses that could attest to what had been said. I also had to dig through old boxes at home looking for the small cassette that I had used to tape that in-service. Carrying a tape recorder had been a whim in 1998, but it became standard procedure for me when, shortly after a meeting I had had with this Principal, he completely misrepresented what had been discussed, and I decided to make sure that any further disagreements did not become a he said/she said debate where nothing could be accomplished.
Although this was enough to restore the framed quote, it seemed there was never a convenient time for the quote to be retrieved by the Principal from his storage closet, so I did not get the removed framed quote back until the end of the year.
I did not replaced it with a copy. The original was to be rehung or there would be a hauntingly empty space on the wall by the door.
Beyond this obvious removal of the quote was a more subtle one. Upon my careful examination of the poster that consisted of the short biographies of the people on the planes and in the towers, I had found that a small part of one biography had been cut off with scissors. The last sentence of the biography of Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department and first recorded fatality of 9/11, mentioned that he was a celibate, Gay man, and connected with the NYC Chapter of Dignity U.S.A., a Gay Catholic organization working around the Catholic Church’s rejection of Gay people. Nothing else had been removed from any other part of the poster.
I thought him a wonderful role model for our Gay students.
The Principal planned to reprimand me for having hung this display prior to his having reviewed it and in spite of the number of times he was made aware that there would be a display and his saying, more than once, that he would inspect it upon its being put up, so, I told him it would be an honor to have a written reprimand on my file that referenced Fr. Judge.
This meant another meeting with the Union Representative.
The Principal began by chastising me for assuming that he had been the one to cut off the piece of the poster which would have been considered an unacceptable act of vandalism, especially in light of the investigation and decision concerning an earlier poster vandalism when King David was removed. He scoffed at my suggestion that his being seen going through my desk while I was not present and my door had been locked would lead one to suspect he had been looking for scissors because, as he pointed out, he had used another pair of scissors he had borrowed from the teacher across the hall and not any from my desk. His defense that he had not used a pair of scissors from my desk but a pair borrowed from another teacher did not exonerate him from having cut off the piece of the poster as far as I was concerned.
He resented my inference that this was an act of bigotry.
He protested that his motivation was pure as these were sensitive times in the Catholic Church as it was being rocked by all the priest sex scandals, and my mentioning Fr. Judge was a Gay man was highly insensitive to those Catholics on our campus who were attempting to deal with this difficult situation. He was equating a Gay orientation with pedophilia and denying that Gay people in his school could be Catholic.
The wider implication of his mindset was made clear when, once it was pointed out Fr. Judge was known as a Gay, celibate priest, the Principal‘s repeated response was, “as far as you know”. When it was pointed out that any connection between Fr. Judge and pedophilia was a totally wild, unsupported assumption, like Poe‘s Raven stuck on one word, the Principal merely repeated, “as far as you know”. He must have done this about four times in response to any statement that supported the idea that, though he was said to be Gay, Fr. Judge was known to be a good man. It was very disturbing.
The meeting ended soon after when the Principal once again explained he had taken his actions because I had not gotten permission to hang the poster, but could not explain why, if the whole poster were illegally hung, he had only removed that one sentence and not the whole thing.
A thank you note from the Firefighters of New York City written to a teacher at the school whose class had raised and sent some money to the Uniform Firefighters Widows and Orphan Fund, and was signed by the organization’s director, was allowed to stay on her door even though she had not asked permission to hang it, and even as “Widows” implied heterosexuality without her being given the requirement for balance.
Soon after this meeting I submitted a flier for a youth support group, Youth Open To Sexual Orientation, YOTSO, in Norman Oklahoma a few miles south of the city, as Oklahoma City did not as yet have such a group really functioning. It was, after all, a community group with relevance to our students, just as the various “Lock-In” nights at the local Baptist churches were.
His reason for allowing this notice to be posted, as he noted in a memo, was by having such a group off campus, there was no need to have any type of an organization on campus.
He never did explain why Christian groups, who had church-based organizations off campus, had to have two organizations on it.
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